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Over the last couple of years I’ve been looking at the feasibility of getting photovoltaic cells put on the roof of my house. I’ve only got a small amount of roof space seeing as I live in a mid terrace so wasn’t sure if I could get enough panels to make it worth while. A couple of months ago I decided to take the plunge and get a few quotes in. Unfortunately, this is where I met the main hurdle with the whole project. Despite emailing half a dozen companies, I only got two visits to give me a quote, and only one of those actually sent me a quote.

Thankfully I’d done enough research into the technology and rough costs so that I knew the quote I got back was a pretty typical price. The company also seemed to be pretty decent with some good reviews and a good web site. With all that in mind, I decided to go for it and accepted the quote. I was very impressed with how quickly things went. One of the requirements for getting the feed in tariff from the government is to get an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) and within a few days I’d had the survey done for that and the certificate in my hands. Only a little over a week later the panels were installed, commissioned and my meter was running backwards.

Solar install

So, what did I actually get installed? All together, 16 panels were squeezed onto my roof across two elevations with 8 on a west facing aspect and then 8 on the south facing which gave me 4kW in total. The installation is fairly straight forward and involves the two arrays of panels going into an inverter which feeds into the main circuit breaker panel. I’ve also installed a full monitoring system that keeps track of power consumed and solar power produced, which I’ll probably write about in another blog post.

The big question however is, is it all worth it? I haven’t been running them for long enough really to give a definitive answer, but from the calculations I’ve done I think the answer is a resounding yes. The feed in tariff is index linked, so will increase over the 20 year lifespan of the panels along with inflation, and it is highly unlikely that the price of electricity is going to go down, all of which means that I should have paid off the panels totally in under 8 years. I can see that number dropping quite a bit too as electric prices increase. Also, the feed in tariff runs for 20 years, but the panels should last even longer than that and are still 80+% efficient after the 20 year mark so should be providing free electricity for many years after the feed in tariff has finished. Over a 20 year period, the initial investment should see a return of over 12% which is so much more than any bank can offer.

If you can afford to get PV installed, I’d definitely recommend it. I’ve already seen a drastic drop in my electric usage and the money is much better installed on my roof than in the bank.